Products Affected

Method One

If you share your computer with other people, you can maintain separate user accounts for each person who uses the computer. This is useful especially if each user has different tastes in music; users can maintain separate, personalized iTunes music libraries and can customize their iPods accordingly.

Method Two

You may use multiple iPods on a computer without the need to create multiple user accounts. To do this, you can set iTunes to update each iPod with only certain playlists. This method allows you to put all your music on, say, your iPod and keep your iPod shuffle updated with only your workout music. Here’s how to do this with iTunes 9:

Create new iTunes playlists that contain all the music that you want to sync to each iPod.

Deselect the "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" checkbox if it is already selected and click OK. This will prevent iTunes from creating duplicates of your existing media files in the new library folder.

Add the specific media files you want on your iPod to iTunes either by dragging them into iTunes or choosing File > Add to Library (Mac) or File > Add File to Library or Add Folder to Library (Windows).

Once you have the iTunes Library just how you want it, connect and sync your iPod.

Once the sync is complete, quit iTunes.

Mac users: Hold down the Option key while you open iTunes. Windows users: Hold down the Shift key while you open iTunes.

Click Choose library.

Choose your original iTunes Library and click Choose (Mac Users) or Open (Windows Users). You can now switch back and forth between the different libraries for different iPods.